Kerry's wife allows Americans a glimpse of her $750m fortune

By Philip Sherwell in Washington

12:01AM BST 17 Oct 2004

Teresa Hein Kerry, under pressure to reveal details of her vast wealth and earnings, quietly released a summary of her 2003 tax returns on Friday night as attention was focused elsewhere on the White House race between George W Bush and her husband, John Kerry.

The documents showed that she paid almost $800,000 (£444,000) in tax on earnings of more than $5 million - $2.3 million in interest and dividends on Heinz family trusts, and a tax-exempt return of $2.8 million on public bonds. Mr Kerry revealed earlier that he paid tax of just over $100,000 on earnings of $400,000, which included profits from selling artworks.

Mrs Kerry, who gave her occupation as "philanthropist", was not required by law to make her tax details public as she is not running for office. She initially said she wanted to keep the information secret to protect the privacy of her children, with whom she shares joint trusts, and dismissed the uproar about her taxes "as noise from the Right".

Democrat aides, however, urged her to release some information, as the American media and her husband's Republican rivals insisted that her wealth was a matter of public interest in view of Mr Kerry's run for the White House.

Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said that Mrs Heinz Kerry had a "financial interest in the presidential campaign of her husband".

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Mr Kerry kept himself in the Democratic primary race by loaning $6.4 million to his campaign based on his share of a $13 million Boston townhouse that he owns jointly with his wife.

In releasing only the first two summary pages of her tax forms, Mrs Heinz Kerry refused to heed Republican calls to disclose her full federal income tax return. "This tax information goes beyond any legal requirement, but John and I believe it strikes a proper balance between my family's privacy and the media's requests for additional information," she said.

Although several residents of the White House, including Mr Bush, have been multi-millionaires, Mr Kerry and his wife will be the richest president and first lady in American history if he wins the November 2 election.

The family fortune, inherited by Mrs Heinz Kerry in 1991 on the death of her first husband, John, the Heinz ketchup heir, is estimated to be at least $750 million. John F Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, were worth about $125 million in current inflation-adjusted terms when he won the presidency in 1960.

Mr Bush is believed to be worth about $18 million, according to media estimates, far behind not only Mr Kerry but also his vice-president, Dick Cheney, the former Haliburton executive, and John Edwards, the successful trial lawyer who is number two on the Democrat ticket.

Mr Kerry has adapted to his wife's fortune with the ease of a man who, from childhood, spent his time in the company of those much wealthier than himself. His parents were comfortably off but never rich: his father was a diplomat and his mother inherited only a fraction of the money that her family made in trade with China.

Yet the young John Kerry grew up visiting the estates of affluent relatives, the beginning of his lifelong attraction to the world of privilege and money. According to a lengthy investigation by the New York Times last week, his privileged upbringing helped to shape his life but also became a liability for his political career, bolstering his reputation for being aloof.

Relatives helped to fund his education at a private school in New Hampshire and then at Yale. After college, he married his first heiress, Julia Thorne, who came from an old New England family that was also much wealthier than his own. After they divorced in 1988, Mr Kerry sometimes slept on friends' sofas as he commuted between Boston and the federal capital, and lived on his senator's salary.

In 1995, however, he married Teresa Heinz, one of the world's richest women, who had been widowed four years earlier when her husband, John, a Republican senator, died in an air crash. Although they signed a pre-nuptial agreement limiting his potential proceeds from a divorce, he had now entered the world of the truly rich.

Mr Kerry and his wife share five large properties across America (four in her name, one shared). Most of their time is spent in their 18th century house in Boston or their 23-room, $4.7 million townhouse in Washington's desirable Georgetown neighbourhood.

There is also a sprawling $5 million winter retreat in Idaho (a 500-year-old English farmhouse that was shipped across the Atlantic and rebuilt brick by brick); a $10 million summer holiday home in Nantucket (where he sails and windsurfs); and an 88-acre estate worth almost $4 million near Pittsburgh, the heart of the Heinz empire.

Mrs Heinz Kerry's private jet takes the strain out of commuting between the five properties. A collection of valuable Dutch and Flemish artworks hangs on the walls of the Boston and Washington homes and the cellars are stocked with vintage wines. Visitors describe their homes as elegantly decorated but not ostentatious.

The Kerrys' fortune has not been turned into a direct campaign issue by the Bush camp, partly because of the president's own wealth but also because becoming rich, through hard work or marriage, is no vote loser in America, even in blue-collar neighbourhoods. "Class envy doesn't play here," said a Republican strategist. "Most people would just say 'good for him' for marrying a rich widow."

Instead, the Republicans have sought to present Mr Kerry and his wife as haughty elitists who do not grasp the hopes and concerns of middle America. "That's where all the references to a 'liberal Democrat from Massachusetts' come in," said the strategist. "They are code words for being out of touch."